


A Sleepless Night

by thecaptainspeaks



Category: Motherland: Fort Salem (TV)
Genre: But mostly angst, F/F, Fluff, Writing Prompt, also they're married, and happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24329308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecaptainspeaks/pseuds/thecaptainspeaks
Summary: Scylla can't sleep. When she looks at Raelle's newest scar she remembers the road that brought them to where they are now.Based on a writing prompt: if Raelle would have a scar from that stab wound, and if she does then I imagine Scylla tracing the scar after sex one day and she gets emotional about almost losing Raelle
Relationships: Raelle Collar/Scylla Ramshorn
Comments: 16
Kudos: 387





	A Sleepless Night

It was two a.m. and Scylla Collar couldn’t sleep.

Some nights were just like that, her brain unable to shut down even if her body was. So she laid there staring at the ceiling, listening to their house. It was quiet. Even the cat had calmed down and found a place to curl up and sleep.

Her wife slept peacefully beside her. Their curtains weren’t drawn all the way shut and moonlight slanted in a crisp, straight line across Raelle’s back. A faint mark stood out in the pale white glow: a small pink line about an inch long.

Scylla looked at the mark and swallowed. She was a world away the day Raelle got that scar. Hell, she didn’t even find out about what happened until a week later, but by then she thought it was too late.

That was five years ago, but she remembered it like it was yesterday.

Finding out that her boss was Raelle’s very-much-alive mom was a major system shock all on its own. The arguments that resulted from that revelation started then and there and lasted throughout the week. They would have continued past that if intel from Fort Salem hadn’t reached them.

A bird left a note at her window, asking for her to meet up at a coffee shop downtown.

Anacostia sat waiting at a table in the back in civilian clothes. Scylla slowed her approach, sensing something wrong. There was deep pain barely hidden in the drill sergeant’s eyes when she finally looked up from her mug. Scylla’s heart sank.

“What is it? What happened?” she asked, taking the seat across from her.

Anacostia swallowed. “The mission the Bellweather unit went on with Alder…”

Scylla could only nod and wait for her to continue.

“Craven’s the only one who came back.”

Heat prickled at the corners of her eyes.

“What? I don’t…”

“Things went very south very fast. They said she ran to save one of the Tarim, a little boy. She got hurt bad and Abigail tried to help, but...they had to leave them. The way they talked it sounded like they weren’t going to make it even if they were on the bat.”

Her eyes burned with the tears welling up in them. “Raelle’s….”

“Gone, Scylla. I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t believe you. I would’ve felt‒” She bit back a sob. Would she have? “‒something.”

Anacostia took her hands in hers, trying to comfort and ground her. “I know this is a lot‒”

Scylla couldn’t stop the tears now. Raelle, dead? On a mission with Adler?

It was too much.

“I have to go.”

“Scylla, wait‒”

The walk from there to the safe house was a blur. Emotions swirled and raged inside of her but she felt nothing, all of it rushing headlong into the jagged crater-sized hole ripped into her heart. Her soul.

Raelle Collar, dead.

Ground up into war meat at just eighteen years old.

That’s what she wanted, in the beginning. With nothing to live for, that was all she _could_ want. But Scylla saw that change firsthand, knew it had a lot to do with the fact that they were in love.

_I’m sorry we ever met, Scyl._

Those words were a punch to the gut, then.

Now they were a knife in her heart, twisted to accelerate the pain.

She’d never get a chance to explain herself. To apologize, to atone.

All that youth and beauty and fury. Gone.

Willa sat at the kitchen table. Her expression was blank as she stared unblinking at the wall. Tears lined her face, too. Scylla sat at the opposite end. She looked at Willa. Willa looked at her.

They sat in silence as afternoon turned to dusk turned to night.

Something akin to understanding passed between them that day.

Raelle murmured something in her sleep. She shifted from her side to her back, the covers getting pushed off to her lower half.

Scylla leaned up onto her elbows to look at her. It still felt like a miracle that Raelle was alive.

But there she was, laying next to her in their bed. Her unbraided hair fanned out around her face, the blonde looking almost white in the darkness. Her chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm. Scylla watched, her breath catching at the sight. Her Raelle, her wife, safe and alive and here with her.

Getting to this point had been so hard.

When she first heard the whispers of the witch bomb and its cause she nearly fainted. As much as she wanted to believe in it, in the possibilities it implied, the last thing she wanted was to give herself false hope. She’d lost Raelle twice already, and setting herself up for failure a third time was utter madness.

But little by little the rumors solidified until they couldn’t be ignored.

The recon team sent to scout the area and recover the fallen came back with mushrooms instead of bodies. A miles-long trail led them to an eventual dead-end.

Then a bat from a remote military outpost flew into Fort Salem. To everyone’s shock and surprise and joy Abigail and Raelle stepped off of it, seemingly no worse for wear.

The resurgence of the Camarilla may have shocked Alder but it didn’t phase Willa’s Spree cell. They were the ones responsible for the soccer stadium warning.

And when Willa stepped out from the shadows to offer a ceasefire and cooperation in order to take them out, everything went to shit.

Those were some of the worst months of Raelle’s life, even worse than when she thought her mother had died. Scylla’s too, by extension. Love wasn’t enough to counteract the hurt Willa caused her, but in the end it opened the gateway for her and Raelle’s reconciliation. Their first round of love burned hot and bright and fast, an inferno that grew to a fever pitch before being doused by a tsunami. Only embers remained then, but over time and with a lot of communication she and Raelle were able to rekindle those flames, more steady and controlled this time around.

And as Scylla looked at her now in the moonlight she felt that familiar warmth settle into her, heart, mind, and soul.

Raelle was here. Raelle was hers.

Scylla looked at Raelle’s bare chest and frowned. Right above her heart, a place she kissed so often, was another scar identical to the one on her back. A different kind of heat filled her at the thought; they had stabbed her in the back, and through her heart.

A killing blow. One that worked, until suddenly it didn’t.

Scylla reached out a hand and gently, gently traced the raised pink line with her index finger. Raelle’s heart, long since healed, beat slow and steady beneath it.

When they were alone one night, laying exhausted and happy (finally, finally happy) in each other’s arms, Raelle had told her the story. Scylla listened attentively; neither Raelle nor Abigail talked about what happened to them openly. She never pried, although she was dying to know.

Of course, hearing it was one thing. Reliving the memory was another.

They were still working things out between them when they were deployed together. It was supposed to be a stealth recon mission with no enemy engagement but then one thing led to another and their party got drawn into combat.

Raelle hadn’t been in a good headspace then. Separated from the others, she took on more Camarilla fighters than she should have. (Scylla could’ve throttled Willa at that point; between her mother’s betrayal and PTSD from the last time she fought the witch hunters, Raelle nearly got herself killed _again_.)

Scylla found her first, bloody and exhausted on the ground, surrounded by bodies. She linked with her immediately, giving everything she could spare to Raelle and then some.

Raelle gave her a new kind of heartbreak in return.

_They’re surrounded by both the Camarilla and intense fear. It’s hard to see through the sand swirling around, hard to hear over the bat’s blades spinning overhead. Shock is swirling in her blood with adrenaline._

_With two biddies down, Alder was on her last legs until Tally offered herself, her youth. They’d lost a handful of their squad already, and the after images of their pilots being burned at the stake were seared in her mind forever._

_The little boy in the beanie, the one she’d healed not an hour prior, running from the bat through the sand. Her instincts kicking in and her running after him. Abigail out on defense while she coaxed the boy back. Her mother’s combat charm, meant to keep her safe, now pinned to his shirt. Abigail taking him back to safety while Raelle took over defense._

_She thought the coast was clear, and turned. After two steps she felt a piercing coldness in her chest, right where the small weight of the combat charm used to be. Steel, and the shock of red, and the heat of her own blood on her hands._

_Abigail’s windstrike sounded so far away as she collapsed onto her knees, the ground. Then her sister’s hand was holding hers, forcing life back into her._

_She knew it wouldn’t work. Knew she was too far gone. And Abigail was going down with her._

_“Always had to be the hero, huh Bellweather?”_

_“I love you, shitbird.”_

_Darkness encroaching on her vision, blurring out the sky above._

_Tingling in their joined hands. The afterglow feeling of her S was especially prominent._

Scylla. I love…

_A flash of blinding light and the eardrum shattering sound of an explosion._

Then the memory cuts out.

Scylla shuddered. She had come so close to losing Raelle that day and didn’t even know it.

It took another month after that mission before Raelle was willing to talk about the fact that she knew the memory transferred over. They agreed to never go into combat again without their charms that day.

“Mmm. Scyl?” Raelle stirred, cracking her eyes open. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just some trouble sleeping.”

“C’mere,” she said groggily, shifting her arm so it was around Scylla’s shoulders.

She nestled herself against Raelle, her head on her shoulder and hand splayed over the center of her chest. The heartbeat she felt beneath her fingertips was her most favorite, most precious thing in her world.

“I love you Scyl. Get some sleep.”

“I love you too, Rae.”

She leaned up to kiss Raelle’s lips before closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.


End file.
